Sec­tor de­mands in­dus­try sta­tus

With an eye on the Union Bud­get, the in­dus­try’s ex­pec­ta­tions for ef­fec­tive lo­gis­tics and sup­ply chain man­age­ment are high. De­spite the chal­lenges, hopes are pinned on so­lu­tions to long pend­ing is­sues this fis­cal year.

With the Union Bud­get 201617 sched­uled to be un­veiled on Fe­bru­ary 29, 2016 by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Arun Jait­ley, the lo­gis­tics in­dus­try has af­fixed its con­cerns on the govern­ment. De­spite be­ing the back­bone of the econ­omy, the sec­tor does not get the de­sired al­lo­ca­tion by the govern­ment, feel ex­perts. The ‘Make in In­dia’ cam­paignpg has raised hopes pes too. On one hand, the sec­tor needs eds a sig­nif­i­cant ramp up in air­port, port, sea ports, roads, high­way and d trans­port in­fra­struc­ture and d on the other hand the de­mand is to take sup­ply chain and lo­gis­tics as a pri­or­ity sec­tor.

For timely com­ple­tion, to in­crease the speed of the move­ments of goods, im­prove busi­ness ef­fi­ciency, re­duce trans­ac­tion cost and fi­nally en­hance the over­all ser­vice per­for­mance of the coun­try, steps like sin­gle win­dow clear­ance and elec­tronic data ex­change are ex­pected. It is es­sen­tial that the lo­gis­tics gin dust ryy is pro­vided with the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture by the air­port oper­a­tors to ef­fec­tively han­dle

their func­tions in a smoother man­ner overcoming the mi­nor glitches which keep on erupt­ing presently. On the in­fra­struc­ture front, the sec­tor ex­pects govern­ment to in­vest in big­ger ware­hous­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

Last year, an im­por­tant ini­tia­tive of set­ting up Air Freight Sta­tion (AFS) across the coun­try y was taken, now the sec­torsec waits for the re­fined pol­icy wherein CFS wouldw be al­lowed to have AFS fa­cil­ity and later n new in­de­pen­dent fa­cil­ity of AFS should be cons con­sid­ered. Lo­gis­tics ex­perts share their ex­pecta ex­pec­ta­tions. Ex­cerpts:

AnilAn Khanna, Manag­ingManagi Di­rec­tor, Blue Dart Ex­pressEx

Fore­most would be our long pend­ingpe de­mand of grant of in­dus­try sta­tus, which would help the sec­torsec be in­de­pen­dent and re­source­ful.re­sourc The pro­posed GST bill ex­pect­edex to be im­ple­mented

byb fis­cal year 2016-17 will bring in more ef­fi­ciency and re­duce mul­ti­ple taxes. The im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new draft ‘Na­tional Civil Avi­a­tion Pol­icy’ 2015 put out by MoCA is awaited. Post the pri­vati­sa­tion of ma­jor air­ports, the op­er­at­ing cost at those air­ports have mul­ti­plied man­i­fold with­out any sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in ser­vices of­fered. Land lease rentals at ma­jor air­ports at key met­ros have risen con­sid­er­ably. We ex­pect the govern­ment to not only speed up the task of de­vel­op­ing air­ports but also en­sure that ac­cess to busi­ness and man­u­fac­tur­ing is eased. The govern­ment needs to in­cen­tivise in­vest­ment in th­ese in­fra­struc­ture projects by ex­empt­ing levy of in­di­rect taxes on all in­puts used in such projects or al­low­ing a re­fund/credit mech­a­nism for taxes paid on in­puts used for such projects. The air­line in­dus­try should be de­clared as ‘core in­fra­struc­ture’ which will then al­low all con­se­quen­tial in­cen­tives to be made avail­able to this sec­tor.

Avi­a­tion Tur­bine Fuel (ATF) should be given a ‘de­clared goods’ sta­tus to at­tract a uni­form sales of the Di­rect Tax Code (DTC) and im­ple­ment GST which will be a game changer.

As re­gards the cargo and lo­gis­tics in­dus­try, the govern­ment is ex­pected to in­tro­duce vi­tal mea­sures which could be help­ful in ac­cel­er­at­ing the ex­port by ex­tend­ing as­sorted sops to the ship­pers via sin­gle win­dow clear­ance of the ex­port for­mal­i­ties, in­tro­duc­ing Elec­tronic Data In­ter­face among all the stake­hold­ers and en­hanc­ing in­cen­tives es­pe­cially on com­modi­ties to be pro­moted.

It is also es­sen­tial that the lo­gis­tics in­dus­try is pro­vided with the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture by the air­port oper­a­tors to han­dle their func­tions in a smoother man­ner. It is also de­sir­able to pro­mote ded­i­cated cargo hubs or cargo city in the vicin­ity of the ma­jor metro air­ports where the con­cerned cargo ac­tiv­i­ties can be ef­fec­tively car­ried out within its pe­riph­ery. The cool­ing cen­tres also need to be es­tab­lished at all the vi­tal air­port premises to pro­mote the ex­ports of the as­sorted veg­etable prod­ucts. Like­wise, ac­ces­si­ble clear­ing cen­tres should also be po­si­tioned to fa­cil­i­tate the manda­tory doc­u­men­ta­tion such as is­suance of Phy­tosan­i­tary cer­tifi­cate in re­spect of the per­ish­able prod­ucts. into a sin­gle tax. Im­ple­men­ta­tion of dis­torted with three kinds of taxes in place of one and mul­ti­ple reg­is­tra­tions for dif­fer­ent states ju­ris­dic­tion will take away all the ben­e­fits that are en­vis­aged in the con­cept of GST.